Chamber and committees

Yes, they do. Obviously, a Scottish social security system is developing, but the majority of social security powers still rest with the UK Government. We have shown that, with limited powers, we can do much; with independence, we can do much more. That is an additional reason for having the referendum and for voting yes in it—it will be transformational for people in this country.

I agree with Michelle Thomson that a better future is possible. That is what we are steering towards.

What has been published today is an analysis that compares the UK with all of our neighbour states—Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands. They are our neighbouring countries. What do they all have in common? They are all wealthier—some significantly—than the UK. The wealth gap is lower, income inequality in those countries is lower, poverty rates are lower, and there are fewer children living in poverty. The comparator countries have higher social mobility and most have a smaller gender pay gap. They have higher productivity than the UK, gross expenditure on research and development is higher in most of them, and business investment is higher, too.

Those are the differences between the United Kingdom and all our neighbouring countries in 2021. The time is coming for us to embrace a better future. We will do that through a democratic vote for independence. We have options: they are the status quo of Brexit Britain under Boris Johnson, or an independent Scotland that is run by the people who were actually elected by the people who live in this country.

The facts about pension levels are there for all to see in the comparisons with other countries, whose pensioners are significantly better off than pensioners in the UK. Pensions will be explored in greater detail in one of the forthcoming papers in the series, but it is a statement of fact that pensioners are significantly worse off in the UK, so I look forward to their having a better future in an independent Scotland.

What Liz Smith failed to mention is that the United Kingdom has had one of the biggest debts of any country in the European Union, so we will take no lessons from those on the Conservative front bench.

It is eminently better for us to be able to make decisions closer to home on all the key issues. I invite Liz Smith to have a look at the document, which rests on reputable statistics of a high standard from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and others, and ask herself why it is the case that all our neighbouring countries are significantly better off than Scotland is in the United Kingdom.

I know that it must be a very difficult read when confronted with the facts, but the facts are the facts, and they show that our neighbouring countries are significantly better off. I suggest that that is a much better future for Scotland, rather than a United Kingdom with its mountain of debt.

Yes, it does, and that is exactly what our neighbouring countries have done. One of the interesting aspects of the research on this question is that there is no fits-all approach across our comparative neighbouring countries. There are different models—some that Ross Greer might find to be closer to his political heart and others that centre-right politicians might see as the right way forward. What is interesting is that all of those countries, across the piece and almost without exception in terms of the metrics, are better off. What appears to be key to the success of them all is that they are able to make better decisions for themselves.

Incidentally, I note that, with the exception of Switzerland, every single one of our comparator countries has, in relatively recent historical memory, been part of a wider union and decided that it was better for them to make decisions closer to home. They managed it, and I am sure that we will manage just as well.

There is the view through the other end of the telescope, which is of cultural organisations and institutions coming forward and saying that they have something to offer in this space. That can and, I hope, will come out of the exercise. We are having to rethink how we can deliver priorities across Government, which will be done by working in partnership with organisations. Sarah Boyack is absolutely right to highlight how important local government is in that, but it is also about what cultural organisations do.

I go back to my example of the meeting at National Museums Scotland yesterday and asking its trustees what they are thinking about. Our museums—they are not all in Edinburgh; they are in various parts of the country—lend themselves very well to providing services that social prescribing can offer. There are other institutions across Scotland that can do it, as well. That means that institutions will have to think about how they can make services accessible and understandable to practitioners who would prescribe them. Committee members will remember my evidence session with Humza Yousaf, at which we began to explore what we will need to do next to ensure that people who are likely to want to use social prescribing know what facilities are available to them.

That is why we have exercises such as the review. It is not an unforeseen consequence—it is actually at the heart of the matter and makes everybody ask where we need to be more innovative. It is not necessarily about cash or constraints; it is about asking what we can do differently to ensure that we use the resources of our museums, galleries and so on to fulfil that purpose.

We are working together on the matter. I am happy to give Sarah Boyack comfort on that; officials in the culture directorate and others are discussing how to take all this forward.

I took the opportunity to highlight something that should not be lost in all this: there are actors other than the Government, so we need to make sure that we involve all of them, and we need to do that at pace.

Of course, Mr Cameron left out the other option: that the UK Government respects the result of the Scottish Parliament election and the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, acts in exactly the same way that his predecessor, David Cameron, did. As the Mr Cameron who is on this committee knows, Scottish politics is full of UK Governments saying no, no, no, yes. I invite him to work with me to persuade the UK Government to live up to its democratic undertakings. After all, the UK Government is particularly keen on going around the world saying that the UK is a democratic country that upholds the highest standards of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. It would be really nice if it did that in this case as well.

My colleague Neil Gray has been dealing with that matter, and internal communication is circulating on that. It would probably make more sense for me to write to the committee, because I am sure that Mr Golden is not the only member of the committee to want to understand the background to all that.

However, I make the general point that, over the coming years, funding constraints will impact organisations that do good work. Would I wish it to be so? No; I would far rather that we did not have the constrained circumstances that we have. I underline this point as we come towards the end of the evidence session, because it is important: we as the Government have to live within our means, because this Government does not have the normal levers at its disposal that other Governments do, such as the ability to borrow. Would I wish for us to be able to maintain our spending commitments as had been envisaged in less constrained times? Absolutely. Will issues come along where people, quite rightly, want to know whether the appropriate decision is being made? Yes; that is a perfectly legitimate approach to take, but I acknowledge the fact that difficult decisions will have to be made.

One of the challenges, which are also opportunities, on which we will have to be as good as we can be in Government is, if there is a traditional funding line that has supported a good organisation—Maurice Golden has highlighted one—how we ensure that there are other, parallel funding streams that might be able to bridge the gap. I am not necessarily saying that that is the case in the instance to which Maurice Golden referred, but we need to ensure that we get maximum value out of the resources that we have in order to maintain and support the organisations that are operating. However, I commit to writing back to the convener on the specific case so that Maurice Golden and colleagues can have better insight into it.

That relates to the questions on Historic Environment Scotland that Sarah Boyack asked. It is much easier to retrofit a relatively recent building to reduce its carbon emissions. It is more and more difficult to do that the older a building gets. There is a sliding scale of challenge in that.

On whether different allowances should be given for that reality, I would want to be better advised about how we are doing that in the first place. I observe that—I had this conversation yesterday—many organisations that have begun to go down the path of making the changes that we will all have to make have started with the lowest-hanging fruit. There is a general understanding that the closer we get to the more testing targets that we have, the more difficult will be the decisions that we have to make as we go along.

That fits in part with the appeal that Kate Forbes made for us to try to protect a space to have a mature debate about how we do that. If all we do is retreat into our ideological trenches and not allow ourselves to think in new ways in all directions, we will probably not be able to answer some of those really big questions.

I am not sure that I have to hand the answer for the question that Maurice Golden asked but I acknowledge that some buildings, specifically older buildings, will be next to impossible to upgrade to the latest environmental standards whereas most that are being, or have recently been, built are at it. I am content to consider how one accounts for that difference.